We started off in Vienna on a walking tour of the city, highlighting the important medical sites. It was really interesting, but I was the coldest I have ever been in my life. Let me just key you in real quick on what I was wearing: A pair of leggings, a pair of jeans, a turtleneck sweater, a thicker sweater, a giant puffy coat, gloves, a scarf, two pairs of wool socks, and winter boots. Was this sufficient? No, no it was not. Later it started to snow, which made everything better: Wet cold is miserable; snowy cold is awesome. Anyway, after the tour we went to warm up in a traditional Austrian coffeehouse with some cake and coffee. Then, we toured the crypt of St. Michael's Cathedral, which was really cool! For dinner that night, we ate at the Goulash Museum, and it was absolutely delicious. I had pork goulash with sauerkraut and potatoes. For dessert, I had chocolate goulash, which had pieces of cake drowned in chocolate sauce. As I had gotten up at four o'clock that morning, I went to bed early.
On day two we only had one scheduled activity, touring the Narrenturm. Also called the Fool's Tower, it is a cylindrical building that is Europe's oldest insane asylum and now holds a pathologic-anatomical museum. As a pre-medical student, I found it super interesting, but it is definitely not for the squeamish as it was quite gruesome. Afterward, we had a Bmen (biomedical engineering) vs. Bims (biomedical sciences) snowball fight. It was my very first snowball fight, and it was so much fun! During free time, I toured the Schonbrunn palace (home of the Habsburg monarchs) and the Belvedere palace, which currently holds an expansive art collection. One of my top highlights of the entire trip to Vienna was seeing The Kiss, a painting by Gustav Klimt. I always love seeing masterpieces in person that I have studied in art classes, and I freaked out a little bit (no shame) when I saw it. It was beautiful. Later we went ice-skating in the most beautiful rink imaginable. I have to admit, I am really bad at ice-skating and don't usually have fun, but it was great! (Thanks for convincing me to go Claire!)
Day three, we toured the Josephinum (a medical museum housing wax anatomical models), saw the Sigmund Freud house, and went to an amazing string quartet concert (they played Mozart and Beethoven). It was a fun and packed day. On our last day in Vienna, we went to the Spanish horse riding school practice, toured the natural history museum, and had some more free time for souvenir shopping. That night, a group of fourteen of us took a bus to Prague. So as not to make this blog post a novel, I'll talk about Prague in Part 2!
In recap, Vienna was a big, beautiful city. Because of the historical relationship between Germany and Austria, it did feel like a bigger version of Bonn. I would love to go back someday in the summertime to see everything I didn't get to on this trip.
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